AN OUTLAW POET MANIFESTO
To be one from whose ashes someday truth shall arise -- a troubadour
wandering the byways of America, traveling from coast to coast by its
railroad tracks and highways, stopping off to recite your poems, to
stay with a lover, visit friends--to walk the streets of cities and
towns, searching for the ghost of something that may have never been
but had only promised to be, and hoping to crystallize this phantom
ideal through the power of your language, the sheer force of the
rhythm in your heart, fire in your belly, vision in your head; to
live broke and unknown but admired by other poets who are equally
down and out; to watch others go that same road and come to ruin and
yet to courageously continue on your way; to watch the decades pass
and others less gifted then you get ahead because unscrupulous and yet
to pen your words anyway, paint and hang your pictures in empty rooms
and sing your song to an audience that at times is no more than just
a handful of drunks who are only half listening, and to wake them up,
stand them upright, watch their faces brighten and backs straighten
and heads lift high because of the hopeful truth of your poems; to
need people yet feel eternally a stranger; to try and reach out anyway
and, with that painful joy that comes from knowing you are never truly
with anyone but your Maker and the wind in the trees to live as one who
believes in such crazy things as Truth and Justice, Dignity and Beauty;
to be all this is to be an Outlaw Poet and to live as the Universe
intended. And if, my friend, you are such a one anywhere, in any land,
a writer in any language who believes in and performs such things, then
you too belong to the lyrical brigands who have assembled here. Let us
hijack the ship of Poetry and set sail for a new vista, a vastly
different horizon then the one looming all around.
What do we see as we pass the coast but the burning neo-fascistic
world ruled by Corporations and Gingrich's, Gates and Gay Bashers and
Paparazzi and child murderers. And over there, in their own sleazy
corner, are the cowed arts administrators, the soul's assassins, and
those slick editors and producers and huckstering dilettantes and
critics who squeeze the life and meaning from American letters by
pandering to what is cheap and annihilating about our culture and in
ourselves.
This manifesto is a pledge to write poems of profound decency and
passion in the last days of the Twentieth Century; to be poets who
share a belief in openness and freedom, excellence and democracy in
an era that is without virtue or honor. For us, the new millennium just
ahead promises no better then more ruin unless somehow we change for
once and all the hearts and minds of the people we live among. This
and nothing less must be our purpose.
And yet, in doing so, we should not be just prophets of dishonor,
rigidly dogmatic or politically correct, nor permit mere cant to pose
as poetry. We must be first and foremost poets who will not compromise
our beliefs, our art, and who will continue to act as though our words
contain the seeds of change, and in the certain conviction that poets
are yet the most dangerous persons in society, the bottom line threat
to tyrants and fools.
Signed,
Alan Kaufman, San Francisco*
*Editor "The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry"
(Forthcoming, April 99' from Thunder's Mouth Press)

JOHN HORVATH, JR.
DOMUS
~~~~~
He loved no place for what it was
but what he could make of it
I recall a wondrous instant: father planting trees
around two stories tall a dwelling of brick brightened
with roseate windows made of glass, and hard-wooded
floors parquetried; neighbors that would be from birth
till death gathered and we sang, we sang sweet airs--
the last time such airs were sung--for traveling,
whose rhythms were for wagon wheels and ocean waves.
he made a strange form as if roof and wall;
it shelters people, and it is called "house"
nor loved he a man for who he was
but for what he might become
I recall a wondrous instant: father planting trees--
plum, almond, peach, and apricot--around that house
of brick two stories tall with windowpanes of glass
and hard-wood floors while neighbors who'd announce
our future births with pagan song and Christian toasts
gathered and sang sweet airs that none might sing again,
rhythms from the roll of wagon wheels and ocean ships.
He met people--with bulky shoulders, massive necks,
broad-chested, full of toughness, health and strength
like animals and trees of the North.
but each face is like the country:
plain, an open and a wild waste.
He loved no place for what it was but loved
for what he could make of it; nor loved
a man for what he was but for what he could
become--a wondrous instant, I recall
I was among the guests;
mead and wine drank I;
and, what I saw, I put
into these very books.
JOHN HORVATH, JR.
TENDING FATHER'S PLOT
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Among the quiet here at this niche of Zion's bones
and old beards still full years after vanities
one learns the knower seldom makes the known
and the doubter often generates the doubt ex nothingness;
one comes to feel a truth in faith, that it breeds heroes
of us all far better than an unbelief stillborn, nothing
worth heroic death, and better than knowing something known.
These many little garden plots attest a long such faith
occurred, occurring, shall continue to occur
among the quiet here, this niche of Zion's bones
and old beards still full years after vanities.
I am surprised by love--as Miriam surprised by God accepted
her conception state, they too forwarded silly in faith
though time would unbud--no matter how surprised--the dream
and I will also find myself alone, sure of death,
like these many beards and bones are sure of loss
though remains attest to something of a permanence
among the quiet here, this niche of Zion's bones
and old beards still full years after vanities,
and sure of solitude always in the present days
that are coldly saddest of the year. Perhaps so
(No. I am unconvinced though by love surprised
that should I treasure live no life lives after.
A place is but a place, these monuments persist).
Here the simple trim the well-kept monuments;
their faces care precisely, a measured love
that gives a share to flesh, another up to faith
among the quiet here, this niche of Zion's bones.
Love is a surcharged life, a weeding of our doubts.
Father is dust and I am dust; I've nothing more.
The headstone is a stone; there is nothing more.
The knowledge that I gain is only doubt
as beauty in the garden plot is weeds torn out.
Among the quiet here at this niche of Zion's bones
and old beards full still after years of vanities
weeds flourish on that part reserved to him
and his tree spreads its shading branches out
toward empty sky. Like arms outstretched in agony
of prayer never to be answered, these his branches
thin where they meet the air, and these his leaves
will fall as surely as did hands. A small rustle
then will pass among the gardeners who note
me on my knees as if attending to someone who
is no one at all, serving something not a thing
at all. They hear and curse parched leaves rushed
across their garden plots; they know I love the leaves.
Children ought not remind the living that there's
death nor curse the dead for something left of life.
What falls is nothing more than uninvited mulch
that feed the garden and its weeds--it is
a garden and nothing more--and so is faith.
I tend the garden, love the seed, the bud, and
love the blossom, all parts that are or were
the flower; and the weed, I love the weed
her among the quiet in this niche of Zion's bones
and old beards still full of vanity after years
where is this surprise of love and love of doubt
there's also something about worms that tunnel earth
as if the garden plot were air and only air.
So much for what I learn and make and generate--
a heavy breathing on my knees must set it right.
Love yet amounts to something I've not said.
Practiced gardeners have faith that when I rise
I mean by going that I shall come again;
that serving as I've served I serve an end,
that each to his own father's plot must tend
and, if he does, harvest of its fruit he'll earn.
JOHN HORVATH, JR.
A KIND OF A KINDNESS
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Children, it's nightfall; please hurry to bed
the spectrum of color is replaced by the dead
in white robes and black, they'll steal you away
if when they come looking you see what they are.
For them you must be the color of one or the other
else they bleed you and crush your bones for their
damnable dinner, your fine flesh for their feast.
Thus remember who we and whence we came; or, die.
Tell me a story, daddy,
It is a hard scrap of road--gutted
like young men's dreams of women
left discolored in the gutter
begging peace for their world.
From the belfry sparrows erupt
bringing no more news
of shriveled leaves; as if
foolish, embarrassed, selfish,
under covered glorious hair in the pews
is a stretched scar of an old wound.
I do not understand;
Tell me in my words, papa;
Tell me a story, daddy,
about another world different.
Evening.
I was twelve,
dear child,
be patient.
Who did not serve, deserve their hell,
the beat of the sun on softening flesh.
Had I been a Nazi, the world would well
with Thee in America; I would have said
to the Inquisitor, I've no love of red.
But I was an honest man; most are dead.
I was never young, daughter,
The world dislikes its young.
Tell me about old ones,
their country of lovers
far away; before lights
went out, tell me a story--
I'm afraid of the dark.
Form of the goddess Diana.
I am the youngest of men,
in the country of blindness
I have seen far away sights
that burn in my memories--
and I'm afraid of the dim.
Daddy, can I be a hunter? I asked.
The deer and sparrow will be mine enemies,
and I will overcome them through my prowess
with the bow, I will devour their loose sky.
If you promise me the bow; I promise riches.
He delivered his promises. It was hard times.
We saved--we waited our turn. Bought a weapon
I would never have the youth to use.
We've no banner, no crown. Nor cross of gold,
no wooden shield upon which to bear me homeward.
Lay me amid tall grasses, an acorn in my fist,
at a crossroads that I might help others decide.
We've no banner, no crown. Nor cross of gold,
no wooden shield upon which to bear me homeward.
Mother, tell that I loved them
too much to hurt them with lies
lied me when I was a youngster already old
Here, young boys--the finest
to stand that might be taken
in this land of opportunities--
all ten to forty of them were alive, bound together
walking along the roadside, chained to their labor.
And as I was passing them, the cattle-cars I recalled.
Here, you work in the loose air alongside the tracks
leading to places where you never or might have been
or where crimes more sordid than yours have happened
unaware of your wishing them your own.
When you are at the end of your labor,
will there be a cooling shower for you
to cleanse you of your memories.
If the Indian here and I abroad,
then why not you? Be grateful.
I will tell their children
how I brushed those tits
so near to death; dragged
the almost bones of women
to the gravesite to avoid
the baths.
I kissed their living lips and buried them alive
skirted shards of tiles and pots, window and mirror
among the bomb craters to be at the side of those
I had left behind. Where had they gone? Where?
Answering his breath growing heavy,
A man whose destiny is slavery can overcome a Count
but empties while the petals unfold;
thus slowly to whence he came he travels.
Now that I'm older, old man in his bones,
the urge to move elsewhere is a kind of a kindness
(God, let me move from this Land of Nod).
Tell me a story, daddy.
--So my father, the gypsy, had said.
drawn from houses (half of them empty) to run
while women and the weak die as the men watch--
looking for gold cobblestones.
Escaped the past or went back
to bright sounds
he gave and watched me
while they wait the sun to pass
and we would run through tall grass
forever evading the past.
For me, there are grasshoppers, oxen, church steeples,
Over and over on the wide mothering belly of time
I suckle the rich bitter juice of my history
my mother's milk from a dry breast I pass to you
Did you know, father, in early morning, after dew collects
in the flower, there you find water sweet as honey of bees
I'm the kindest of men.
but for what I might become
I would prefer death,
a kind of a kindness.
I love the tall grasses
We live among the androphagi
beware their smile, daughter
thus they will come for you,
with a smile hiding pointed teeth,
their tongues like ripe fruit sweet
beware their smile, daughter,
harvest its fruit
into your story
over and over
among the androphagi
JeanPaul Jenack
Dust Jacket
~~~~~~~~~~~
He already had a hundred titles
selected for his works: exquisite words,
turns of phrase so cutting in their cleverness
that heads would turn, and pages would turn --
and with them his fortune. He would write them
down, one by one, on index cards arranged
in some imaginary chronology
as if copied from a library
card catalogue. Later, he would glue them
to the spines of old books bought by the pound
to line his long-empty shelves -- the proud author,
knowing in his heart that through this act
he was entitled to the moment, and that
you can judge a book by its cover.
JeanPaul Jenack
nightmare peanut
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
some days you feel completely unstrung
an amnesiac elephant, looking
for a lone moment of refuge among
vacant faces around the circus ring
the music blares, and one foot goes in front
of another without the assistance
of fugitive brain-cells down for the count
within this lumbering gray existence
the world's a sick joke, and you've been had --
become a punchline -- then you remember:
"where does an elephant go when it's mad?"
"any-fucking-where it wants to, that's where!"
so you bolt up the aisle, breaking the fetters
between your legs, and feel much, much better
JeanPaul Jenack
Silver Lining
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Every window in the house thrown open
shutters flung wide, still it is not enough.
Light streams inward through every aperture
in pursuit of missing pigment amid
two hundred and fifty-six numbing shades
of gray. To be known only by shadows,
each object defined by its darknesses --
a negative state of cruel contrast
drawn by the Midas promise of rainbows.
Fifty-six reds conjoined on my palette:
all of them illusions of blood, mud, rust,
dust. The colors run from bone-dry to ash.
Above, a dull vapor accumulates:
it's time at last to appreciate clouds.
JeanPaul Jenack
The Unopened Present
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Although not really lost
he has chosen to be:
maps useless to him, he
won't even unfold one.
A dozen friends gather
like wayward compass points,
to tell him "we're here too."
He stares at them blankly,
responds "Do I know you?" --
returns to the bottle
where he has been before
and will be again. It
is far, far easier
when everything is strange
and new, wrapped up tight like
the unopened present
left behind with no card
about whose contents one
can only speculate.
JeanPaul Jenack
Things of Value
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I always loved
that scene in The Godfather --
you know the one --
where Clemenza turns to Rocco
after Rocco shoots Pauli
and says: "Leave the Gun.
Take the cannolis."
It reminds me
of that scene in The Odyssey
where Odysseus --
faced by two men
begging for their lives --
without pause kills the priest,
and saves the poet.
But these are just scenes
without truth -- literary contrivances --
drawn from movie and myth
in which things happen for a reason
and people
instinctively recognize
things of value.
JESSY RANDALL
Sensitive Girl, Affected by Mouse
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
At the edge of the apartment complex
beyond the force-field of the white curb
was a woods, and in the woods, mice.
My brother and I found one, injured or sick
and took it inside to nurse it back to health.
We failed. And mom said, "that mouse
would be happier where you found it."
So we took it back, and left it there,
shivering with -- fear? cold? a sense
of magic, to be home again? And when
we went back, days later, it was still there,
in that exact same inch of dirt by a dandelion,
frozen, dead, I'll never know why.
JESSY RANDALL
House of a Million Rooms
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Let's go
in here. This room is another room.
This room is huge. This room
speaks French. That room is
for books -- no people can go in there. Here
is the tower. The tower is very boring.
Let's go down these stairs. They go
in a circle. Are we getting anywhere? You
are breathing. The house has a stutter:
it moves forward and back. In the tall corner
there, under the slant, is another house, for
magical creatures. No, don't touch anything. Here,
come in here. In this room you can
touch everything you want. There's nothing
out that window. This room
is for you alone. Come back.
JESSY RANDALL
Bed Song
~~~~~~~~
"If I were an insect," you say,
"I'd live in your hair. I'd
hide, here, on your forehead,
under the sweep of your bangs."
You are a kind of insect. So thin,
with glinting eyes, and legs
that kick out, spilling
a glass of water on the floor.
And silent. Like a bug. Perhaps
a few whimpers, some
cricket sound, in the center
of the night, to measure the time
or tell how cold it is. You are
very cold, your feet,
your mind, you don't answer, and then
you sit far away from me
the next morning.
JESSY RANDALL
The High School
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The high school is there --
a huge fat naked baby with main doors
white and open even at midnight with metal
grates to block off the halls and gray-green
lockers lunch box soldiers and the ghost
of Mrs. Winthrop telling you to get to class.
A mythic place
the loves you have here
will always return, will not
let you alone, climb out of the lockers
like an extra pair of shoes
you keep for when it snows.
JESSY RANDALL
The Green Bed
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The green bed
of poetry is an empty bed --
you have to sleep on the ink spot.
Do not put the cat in the poem!
Throw your ex-boyfriend's trumpet out the window
and stop eating potato chips..
I am not what he thinks.
I am far more lovable.
Why doesn't he love me more?
I am filled with sorrow, with
hope, with blackberries.
There is no ocean anywhere near here,
just the subway, cold and deep.
GALE SPRINKLE
Judging
~~~~~~~
I never thumped my Bible.
Watermelons, yes.
The leaves whisper
as they turn.
I read.
I do not pretend
to understand the word fully.
John's gospel speaks forgiveness.
Jesus had time for Mary Magdalene-
prostitute though she was.
Echo after:
I will not judge.
I will not judge.
LYNETTE HALL
every Junkie is a recording
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
-phillip K. dick 1977
Click
hi we're not home right now
so leave a message and we'll
ignore that too
Beeeeep...
slide the needle in the vein
pop the downer in the mouth
snort the candy up your nose
toke the wild mild weed
smoke the slow death plant
push the button for the tube
tilt back your head and take a swallow
play the doctor for a fool
put the coin in the plate
wack the ball another score
pump the abs just 10 more
give yourself the perfect O
dance with music on the floor
lean back relax and take a wallow
join the shrouded misty dream
swim in rose petal comfort
scented sweet as smooth toffee
reality slipping through you
butter and a knife
spread life thick
let's drift south
to sandy beaches on a springfed river
bake our bodies brown and smooth and warm
as hard toffee then enter the coolness
of dixie's mouth and seamlessly dissolve.
don't worry ...
I'm sorry nobody's home
I'm sorry nobody's home
I'm sorry
....the machine will get it.
July 22 98
LYNETTE HALL
No Contact
~~~~~~~~~~
eight by ten
four steps five steps
four steps five steps
circular motion in
this room squared
food comes soon
Wish I had a chain to rattle
a bar to beat
on this sterile monkey's cage
Another line on my arm
two more lines
and I will go for exercise
i think
twenty paces twenty paces
twenty paces twenty paces
look up for sky
it's not there
only more fluorescent
I wonder how long
I have lived here
in this false light
July 1998
LYNETTE HALL
Practicing with fire
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The citronella candle
has good flame for
burning pine needles
My young son testifies
I like to burn stuff mommy
I like to burn
I like to burn...
--I like the way it smells--
says my somewhat older daughter
as the fire dies
along a curved line
turning the needle to incense
sunglow of flame
dance of fire down
to cigarette glow
becoming scent of deep forests
in gathering dusk
our eyes bright
June 1997
BESS KEMP
Some Other Time Perhaps
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Old Mrs. Murty
took a long nap
where she sat.
She didn't realize
she had drifted off
until
her own snoring
startled her back
to her livingroom
and away from that place
too close
to permanent.
BESS KEMP
Resilience
~~~~~~~~~~
There's an old barn
on that hill
near the apple orchard.
It isn't used much anymore
like most forgotten relics.
But still it stands,
defiantly,
against the long winters,
like an old-timer
not quite believing
he's past his prime.
And the apples
fall from the trees
in quiet sympathy.
ALAN KAUFMAN
THE SADDEST MAN
ON EARTH...
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
...ignored how the rain felt
as he left home
for the last time
Wore down
his boot heels
searching for the woman
of his dreams,
but never understood
that life is a woman
Lived in a town
where sadness was illegal
and where grinning
cops ticketed his face
so often
that he lost his license
to cry
The Saddest man
on earth
tuned guitars
but couldn't play them,
cheated the IRS
of his own refund,
fathered a child
who thought she saw
him in perfect strangers
yet didn't recognize
him face to face
I met him once
in a bar
toasting the mirror
with his stare
He had come
south to start
life over
He was a
Mozart of silence
ALAN KAUFMAN
WHO ARE WE?
~~~~~~~~~~
Into the past
I go like a stranger
to discover why at night
I lay alone as a child
waiting for the front door
to slam, my father gone
to night-shift work,
and my mother, Marie, to enter,
unable to sleep, and tell me
tales of childhood
war, pursued by those
who, as she spoke,
seemed to enter the room,
Gestapo men in leather coats
who ordered me to pack
and descend to a waiting truck,
for I am still going to Auschwitz
though a grown man in 1998
I am still boarding the freight,
crushed against numbed, frightened
Jews and Gypsies and Russian
soldiers and homosexuals
crossing frontiers to be gassed
I am her, in my heart,
though I am six feet two
and two hundred and ten pounds
and have played college football
and served as a soldier
and have scars from fights
with knives and jagged
bottles smashed on bars
I am still her, little girl,
hiding in chicken coops
and forests, asleep on dynamite
among partisans
I am still her, brushing teeth
with ashes
from the ruins of nations
gutted in war
I am still her brown eyes
and black hair of persecution
foraging scraps of thistle soup,
a star-shaped patch
sewn to my shirt
I am still my mother
every day in the streets
of New York or San Francisco,
the chimney skies glow and swirl
with soot like night above
a crematorium, or the Bronx
incinerator chute where I
threw out trash in a brick
darkness shooting sparks
I am still her in the streets
of Berkeley, walking among
sparechangers, dyed-hair punkers,
gays in stud leather, Blacks,
Mexicans and Asians
I am still her rounded up
among poets and thieves
and politically incorrect
social deviants
on sun-drenched sidewalks
in the Mission and the Haight,
Greenwich Village, the Lower
East Side, or anywhere the weird
congregate in tolerance
And every day in this age
of intolerance,
in a mental ghetto
affirmed by the homeless,
I pass the dying
with the loud ring of my boots,
ashamed to think that perhaps
my heels are the last thing
they heard
Every day I am a
survivor of AIDS and poverty
Every day I sit in cafes
watching tattoos turn to numbers
and I grow angry
I want America back
I want America to be
the home I never had
And you, who are you
if you hear my voice?
Who are you, stranger
if you read these words?
Who are we
who stand threatened
in these times of darkness?
Who are we, condemned to die,
who do not know ourselves
at all?
ALAN KAUFMAN
MONDAY AFTERNOON IN
HAIGHT ASHBURY
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
You're in a sidewalk cafe
in Haight Ashbury, San Francisco
but unlike New York
your coffee cup isn't bussed
the minute you've drained it
They let you sit from morning
to night, undisturbed
Your cup refills
at the pace of your thirst
You can bag a big table
for yourself and sprawl
You can write poems
a single line in a day
or five pages
in one hour
You can read free alternative newspapers
go out back to the garden
to bake in the sun
or stare out the window
at the endless procession
of slackers
Or you can stare
at your hands
as you're doing now
thinking of the daughter
whom broken marriage
led you to abandon
She lives abroad
with her mother
How, you wonder
without the bucks to send
a gift six thousand
miles away, will you fill
the void you've left
in her?
Or, you can take out
her picture, study it,
the one of her in profile
staring sadly through a window,
imagine that she is wondering
where you are
or you can visualize her waking
startled at night crying:
"Daddy!" But, you're not there
You're in Haight Ashbury,
in your thirties, recovering
from alcoholism, writing poems
You are like so many New Yorkers
who ran aground
in bars on bad marriage
hard labor, mindless consumerism
You made one last ditch geographic
to California to remake yourself
like a sixties movie hero
of mid-life crisis --
but it's the nineties so
you're dressed in black motorcycle
gear, not headband and sandals
and Tracey Chapman is teasing
tears from your eyes
When your forty
she'll be ten
and when you're fifty
she'll be twenty
and if you can live to sixty
with your booze-damaged
guts there'll be a reunion,
gifts, letters, phone calls,
sure, and even a book or two
dedicated to her
and maybe you'll
have dropped in one weekend and meeting
in the kitchen over a midnight glass
of milk, she'll tell you
that nothing you do or say makes it better
"You were gone," she'll say "I needed you then
I feel so empty"
You miss her cries of
glee, others reassure
her fears
there are times
when none but you
can help
but you do not hold her
you cannot hold her now
you will not soon fill your arms
with her softness, her blondness
her blue eyes, her face like yours
It is Monday afternoon
in Haight Ashbury
you are alone
and you say her name aloud
ALAN KAUFMAN
ON READING WHITMAN'S
SONG OF MYSELF
AT ONE O'CLOCK IN
THE MORNING
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
An image or two stuck:
the swimmer tossed into the sea and surfacing
with damp curls, reborn, beside himself with joy,
and further on you enjoin the student,
me I guess,
to destroy you, the teacher,
and that will spread your breast
BANG!
You're dead
I'm out here, Walt, rushing broke
down Mission to beg Unemployment
to cut me a check
I'm out here in dry dock,
spilling my guts like a dweeb to a bunch of drunks
whose names I don't know,
and I'm thinking I'll have these narratives
from Hell tattooed on my skin,
so I can step up to cops,
rip off my shirt
and shout: Read this!
Because underfoot, Walt,
is not grass but flames
I'm living the private American inferno
where anguish is something you do at home,
behind locked doors; terror
expressed to strangers in rented rooms
anonymously, and late at night
over telephones to friends, who sob in turn
of their own HIVs of incurable hepatitis
enlarged livers secreting
schizophrenic genes of utter emotional
drear, shame success tumors,
and harrowing despair at the ghosts
of their walking fathers
I am laughing by kitchen light, Walt,
bent with rot-toothed
grin over your most famous poem,
watching my reflection
in the night of ashtray eyes
and lips shaped by the vowel of Oblivion,
and tonight, Walt, I am James Dean
on the day of his death,
I am Marilyn Monroe's baby grown,
the second one she lost,
and all that I have been
is falling down
like a house of cards
in this room by-the-week,
with my iodine-dabbed
gangrenous leg like a seated shriek
I am shrieking, Walt, for a drink,
for a fix, for a mother, for a God,
for a kindness, for a child,
for a prayer I can say
without sneering in my guts
I'm asking, Walt,
have you got like me
slant eyes, hook nose,
black skin and Spanish lips,
do they let my type with dick,
one ball, big tits, mascara, wig,
pumps, two wombs
and cocktail dress into Heaven?
I'm, sick of Wonder bread, Walt
Have you got democratic steak for me?
Have you got red-blooded boneless
shoes for me, without holes, a lot
of ketchup, size twelve?
Because I'm years in the alleys
in the garbage cans in the rain
laying for you with a poem like a gun
I don't know what's got into me
I'm trigger obsessed
Must be the Bronx where I grew up
Must be Bronx make me
hard as an aerial snapped
off a car, as a packed
Saturday night special,
and I wanna rumble,
Walt, I wanna mix it up
I'm infected with the virus of the poor
who never read the Norton Anthology of Modern Verse
Who sing madrigals of bucked teeth,
harelip and rickets, recite sonnets
of executed eviction summonses
for unpaid back rents, and job
applications to Macdonalds,
and critically deconstruct
stab wounds painted with Mercurochrome
I've got a vision, Walt, of savage
love for the one-eyed drunk,
the limping thief, the unshaven
cabby in drag
I've got a vision, Walt
of the cosmic benefit
of sound nutrition
of medical attention
of housing and of voice
in a truly democratic society
on the filthy piles of flesh
dying on the pavement
I've got a vision of extended hand
of lifting arm
of healing souls leafing and loafing
in winter coats and resoled shoes
and of their lonely power to destroy you,
once and for all, old teacher,
and spread your breast a billion-fold,
to absurd bursting point, like gout,
and not just your breast, old fella,
but your neck and cheeks,
guts and buttocks and knees
will swell, inflamed with their angry joy
And the poor will not drown in the sea
Their deaths, for too long
given over to God, will return to us
with restored trust
in the thriving intimacy of the earth
and from love we will come
and with love we will see
even in the hour of our greatest blindness
that to an even gentler love we go
ALAN KAUFMAN
LET US
~~~~~~
Let us
take ourselves aboard a bus
and travel to the dispossessed
and let us praise their dreamless eyes and hardened
smiles
with rogue words of truth
in the killing fields of their hopes
the slum wards and ragged towns and stolen farms
Let us
take to them the carnival
of our mad and scattered lives
Let us bring them the mountain
Let us give them the vision
of an open window, an unlocked door, a bed to sleep in,
a plate of food
Let us give
them the keys to the house of our love
Let us bare our throats tattooed with roses
our breasts sequined with diamonds
our loins hot with dragons
our hands and feet pierced with beauty
Let us come
to their dusty squares and drinking holes
with canticles of magnificent defeat
Let us deliver in their mangers
of pollution and penitentiaries, shopping malls and
tenements
the hard, beautiful birth of the heart
Let us bring renewal
Let us declare the death of despondency and tyrants
For I have seen our campfires pitched beside the roads
like fallen, still-burning miraculous stars
I have seen our bus voyaging to innocence
I have seen us poet-dogs tossed
the last decade of this century, like a bone,
after ninety years of science and war,
reason and corporation, art and Auschwitz
I have seen my vocation descend like a pen
to a page that can never be filled with enough truth
I have crossed a continent of despair
with a summons much older than lies,
and I swear to you, Poets,
I live for greater than myself
You
street-latin Elizabethan hustlers,
I tell you time has come to deal death's passionate kiss to
kings
Time has come to bare our asses in Paradise
Time has come to strip for freedom
Time has come slut dogs, drag queens,
sadomasochists and criminals
to be Tom Paines, Franklins and Jeffersons
Time has come to write
the Constitution
with our poetry and flesh
Time has come
to costume up for Liberty and ride
with words like steel-tipped whips
into the soul of America
and rage there and sing
till the mouth of every starving child
is fed

GALE TOUSIGNANT
Stones
~~~~~~
I want to see the hand
that set the stone to rolling.
* * *
Just crazy enough to make up a fable
about stones. It goes like this.
As the summer glimmer passed
in dewy haze, Patience's mother
walked the slow and weary road to death.
Sundays only could
Patience shuck the chores
to sit aside the stream.
First she went to church
walking the five miles to town,
swimming the road in small taste of freedom.
Yellow through green leaves,
patches of blue, bee humming
breeze running its fingers through tree tops
unfettered air and her heart pumping in synchronicity.
She was not lonesome though alone.
Christian would accompany her
the journey home, as he had for nigh three years.
They would tarry at the farm gate
to read the future promised in each other's eyes.
She would tease the laughter from him
solely to feed upon the liquid sparkle joy
spilling waterfall from his soul.
The stream-it burbled along much the same way.
Patience marveled at the beauty of the wet stones.
As smooth as the skin of her breast,
little rivers snaking the surface
like blue vein rising toward nipple.
When she fished them from the bed
they took on another face as they dried.
Their secrets stopped shimmering,
held in cold gray arms.
This is when she started breathing into them.
She told of her wanhope for her mother,
the cruelty of her father, the wish to marry Christian
and bear his children in a city,
far from farms, cattle and drudge.
Autumn trudged its stubborn way upon the land.
The North wind sucked the last breath from her mother.
Her father sucked at the teat of a bottle
long into the starless night. He would not,
could not, run the farm alone. He had scented
the flight desire on his daughter.
So he crept into the loft and did
what no man should do to daughter.
Sunrise saw Patience rolling the drunkard from her body.
She slipped barefoot to the stream
unaware of the frost reddening her soles.
Wind snarled, snow spat upon the path.
Like Elaine, Fair Maid of Astolat,
Patience dug her grave in water.
Naked, she piled the secret stones
on her breast in the shape of a cross,
praying for mercy from the God whose law
she was breaking. Amen.
It took three days for sotted father
to find her. The crows had been there first.
* * *
" For sweet Lord Jesu, said the fair maiden, I take Thee to record, on
Thee I was never great offencer against thy laws; but that I loved this
noble knight, Sir Launcelot, out of measure, and of myself , good Lord,
I might not withstand the fervent love wherefore
I have my death.
...And while my body is still hot let this letter be put
in my right hand, and my hand bound fast with the letter until that
I be cold: "
- Le Morte Darthur, Sir Thomas Malory
* * *
Christian stole the cross stones from her casket,
and swallowed them. Her breath lingered within.
He and his wife named their first daughter Patience.
* * *
You can throw them,
you can skip them,
scrub off the moss
and set one to rolling.
Or hold them, like shells,
to your heart and listen.

A New Age: The Centipede Network Of
Artists, Poets, & Writers
An Informational Journey Into A Creative Echonet [9310]
(C) CopyRight "I Write, Therefore, I Develop" By Paul
Lauda

Come one, come all! Welcome to Newsgroup alt.centipede. Established
just for writers, poets, artists, and anyone who is creative. A
place for anyone to participate in, to share their poems, and
learn from all. A place to share *your* dreams, and philosophies.
Even a chance to be published in a magazine.
The original Centipede Network was created on May 16, 1993.
Created because there were no other networks dedicated to such
an audience, and with the help of Klaus Gerken, Centipede soon
started to grow, and become active on many world-wide Bulletin
Board Systems.
We consider Centipede to be a Public Network; however, its a
specialized network, dealing with any type of creative thinking.
Therefore, that makes us something quite exotic, since most nets
are very general and have various topics, not of interest to a
writer--which is where Centipede steps in! No more fuss. A writer
can now access, without phasing out any more conferences, since
the whole net pertains to the writer's interests. This means
that Centipede has all the active topics that any creative
user seeks. And if we don't, then one shall be created.
Feel free to drop by and take a look at newsgroup alt.centipede

Ygdrasil is committed to making literature available, and uses the
Internet as the main distribution channel. On the Net you can find all
of Ygdrasil including the magazines and collections. You can find
Ygdrasil on the Internet at:
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All poems copyrighted by their respective authors. Any reproduction of
these poems, without the express written permission of the authors, is
prohibited.
YGDRASIL: A Journal of the Poetic Arts - Copyright (c) 1993, 1994, 1995,
1996, 1997 & 1998 by Klaus J. Gerken.
The official version of this magazine is available on Ygdrasil's
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Distribution is allowed and encouraged as long as the issue is unchanged.
All checks should be made out to: YGDRASIL PRESS
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